by Leylah Attar
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, before dropping her gaze to her shoes. They were scuffed up and looked like they had been put to good use.
“Do you live around here?” He leaned closer, trying to meet her gaze.
“Get away from me!” She swung her leg back and kicked him hard, right in the balls.
There was moment of poignant eye contact between the two.
Dude, how could you? Damian looked at the girl in disbelief before he crumpled to the floor, his hands cupped between his legs in testicle-protection mode.
OhGodnofugwtuf. That.shit.fucking.hurt.
He doubled over, trying to catch his breath.
Pain radiated out of Damian’s testicles, igniting his midsection in hellfire before settling in his kidneys. Every muscle from his knees to his chest felt like it was cramping all at once. Damian’s head started spinning. He felt violently nauseous, but he suppressed the desire to hurl because the slightest movement amplified the pain. After a few sharp, agonizing breaths, the pain gave way to a dull throbbing that radiated out with each heartbeat.
Damian opened his eyes. The girl was gone. His nuts were destroyed. Obliterated. He was pretty sure of it. He lay on the floor, taking stock of the rest of his body.
Legs? Yup, still there.
Arms? Present. And functional.
Torso? All systems go.
Junk?
Come in, junk? Alive, captain. Not happy, but alive.
Damian took a deep breath and stared at the empty space in the hutch. He had survived eight years in prison, but one kick from a little girl had sent him into a fit of convulsions and existential crisis. He remained curled up like a baby and started laughing. For the first time since Skye and the island, Damian laughed long and hard, holding his throbbing balls as they protested with twinges of indignation.
THERE WAS ONE ROOM THAT remained untouched in Casa Paloma. Damian had ignored it for as long as he could, and although the door to Skye’s room remained shut, it called him every time he walked by. When Damian finally walked in, he awakened childhood ghosts that laughed and sang and jumped up and down on the bed. They scattered faded paper animals in his path and filled his head with whispers of distant memories. Damian was defenseless against them now. He had no barrier to keep them at bay, no chains of anger or hatred to tie them down with. He heard them, saw them, felt them all.
This was where Skye had chucked up chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Well, whatever hadn’t landed on his shoes.
Here, he’d watched her scrutinize her reflection and ask him to make her a cardboard tooth.
Here, they’d held hands in a circle—him and MaMaLu and Skye—before Skye said her bedtime prayer.
As Damian swept the room and cleared the cobwebs, the memories became sharper, clearer, more painful, but at the same time sweeter, like little shards of glass candy that dissolved into pockets of nostalgic flavor, to be sampled and tasted and savored, again and again.
Damian rolled up the dusty bed covers and pried the plywood off the window. The sun streamed in, lighting up the walls and corners and bookshelves. The tree outside Skye’s bedroom had grown taller; the branch he’d used to climb in was now scraping the roof. Damian tilted his head back, following it, and saw a pair of brown legs dangling through the leaves. It was the nut-busting girl, with her scuffed-up, nut-busting shoes. She was leaning against the trunk, reading a book, unaware of being observed.
Damian instinctively cupped his balls.
What the fuck was she doing back here?
He ducked back inside and considered boarding the window up again. His balls still ached, but he had to hand it to her. She wasn’t one to tangle with. He laughed and started sorting through the shelves, thumbing over the books that MaMaLu had once read to him and Skye. The best stories were the ones that weren’t there, the ones she’d made up. They hung suspended around him. Damian took a deep breath, wanting to inhale them, to fill up his lungs with MaMaLu’s voice and her words. He stretched his arms out, rotating three hundred and sixty degrees, taking it all in and . . . stopped short.
A pair of dark eyes was watching him.
The girl was sitting on one of the lower branches now, level with the window. She was wearing a school uniform again. Her book was tucked in the waistband of her skirt and she looked like she’d been ready to scoot down the tree when she’d seen him.
It wasn’t Damian’s finest moment, chest puffed up, spinning around in a dusty room like a would-be ballerina. He put his hands down and met the girl’s stare. Perhaps if he gave her the old western, squinty-eyed glare, she’d resume her descent.
She didn’t. She squinted back at him, smug in the knowledge that the branch wasn’t going to support him, so he couldn’t get to her even if he tried.
A few seconds into the stare down, Damian felt the corners of his mouth lifting. He managed to transform it into a snarl and turned away, busying himself with the task of cleaning up the room. He kept the girl in his periphery. He wasn’t about to drop his guard in case she decided to go all ninja on him again.
He was almost done when he found a pile of colorful papers, the kind he’d once used for origami. Skye had gotten them for him, and he had an instant flashback of the delight on her face whenever he made her something.
It seemed like another lifetime, but Damian’s fingers yearned for the feel of that paper. He picked up a green sheet, yellowed and faded now, but still the brightest thing in that room, and folded it into a swan. It was the last story he remembered MaMaLu telling him and Skye, before all of their lives had changed. Damian felt like he was picking up where he’d left off, except MaMaLu wasn’t there anymore, and Skye wasn’t there anymore. No one was. Except a little girl who was watching him like he afforded her more entertainment than the book she was now pretending to read.
Damian offered her the swan, but she ignored him, keeping her eyes on the book. So, he placed it on the windowsill, picked up two bags filled with garbage and went downstairs to dump them. When he came back up, she was gone. And so was the paper swan.
DAMIAN WAS PAINTING THE KITCHEN when he spotted the girl again. She seemed to stop by at the same time every day, after school. She was kneeling by the pond, feeding the fish that he had just reintroduced into the water. A half peeled orange lay on her lap. She nipped each segment with her teeth and turned it inside out, picking out some of the flesh for the fish and eating the rest.
To Damian, it was one of those perfect snapshots of childhood, the way her world was condensed into an orange and a fish pond, surrounded by sunshine and grass. She was completely immersed in that moment, free of past and future, in it for the sheer enjoyment of the here and now—the things that can be grasped and lived and experienced. It was a lesson Damian needed to learn. He had let the past overshadow his life. He didn’t know what the future held, but he had now. And now was a beautiful, cloudless day. Damian pictured the ocean before him, calm and endless. Although his boat was docked nearby, he hadn’t been on the water since prison. He’d been so caught up with restoring Casa Paloma that he hadn’t taken the time to enjoy his freedom, and more importantly, he hadn’t felt like it. But as he watched the little girl finish her orange and rinse her hands in the pond before leaving, Damian yearned for the wind and the sea again.
He put away the paint, locked the house and spent the afternoon getting reacquainted with old friends: his boat, a blue, blue sky and a sparkling ocean.
Damian made more paper swans for the little girl. He left them lying about where he knew she’d find them: tacked to the gate, sitting on the porch, hanging on a string from the tree by Skye’s window. She never talked to him, but she always took the swans, and she always left before it got dark.
Damian stopped by one of the outdoor markets that had sprung up between Casa Paloma and Paza del Mar. He picked up fresh fruits and vegetables and meat. He was almost done when he spotted cans of tuna stacked on a shelf.
I
made you something, Skye had said.
Her ceviche had turned out to be the foulest thing he’d ever tasted, but those four words, those four words had blown his tightly guarded world apart. No one had loved him or fought for him, or made him feel the way Skye had. The way she still did.
Most days, Damian kept busy enough to ward off thoughts of Skye. Nights were different. At night, he had no defense. He lay in bed with a hunger so wide and so vast that he felt himself get swallowed up in it. Nothing, not even the Lucky Strike box under his pillow, could keep him from falling into the soul-sucking hole in the center of his heart.
As he drove home from the market, Damian wondered where Skye was, if she had found someone who deserved her more than he did, someone who brought her more happiness than pain. He had deliberately kept himself from any information about her. If he knew where she lived, where she worked, where she shopped, he couldn’t have stopped himself from looking her up, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he saw her again, even if it was just from across the street. Living without her was agony, but the thought of seeing her with someone else, no matter how happy and fulfilled, was unbearable.
Damian dropped four bags of groceries in the kitchen and went back to the car for the rest. As he reached the main door, the little girl walked past him, dragging the rest inside.
“Can’t you make anything else?” She plopped herself up on one of the stools and placed a paper swan on the counter.
“You don’t like swans?” He had left that one tucked under a stone by the pond, a few days ago, with its neck peeking out.
“Why do you only make swans?”
“Because my mama told me about a magic swan that hides on the grounds here. I haven’t found one, but you remind me of it.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You make me laugh. That’s some powerful magic. And I think you’re going to grow up into a beautiful swan.”
“Are you calling me an ugly duckling?” She hopped off the stool and confronted him.
“No. I’m just . . .” Damian cupped his groin and jumped back instinctively. He didn’t like the way this little girl had him hopping around like a bunny rabbit. “You know what you are? You’re a big bully. You kick me, you spy on me, you walk in and out of here without my permission, and now you’re trying to intimidate me.”
They glared at each other, her hands on her hips, and him guarding his balls.
“What does ‘intimidate’ mean?” she asked.
“To frighten, terrify, or push someone around.”
Her scowl softened. She seemed to like the idea. “You’re funny,” she said, her face breaking into a grin.
“And you have dimples.” Damian faked disgust.
She stood quietly and watched him put things away.
“This place looks pretty now,” she said. “It was always sad.”
“You like it?”
“It’s nice.” She regarded him for a moment. “What’s your name?”
“Bandidos don’t have names.”
“You’re no bandido.” She giggled. “Bandidos make a mess. You made it nice.”
“Thank you. And you’re welcome to come by any time, as long as your parents are all right with it.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“That may be so, but I’m sure your mother would like to know where you are. Is she home, waiting for you?”
“My mama’s in Valdemoros.”
Damian felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The word itself conjured up gray, concrete-laden memories. He wanted to ask about her father, but growing up without one, he tended to be more sensitive. “You have other family?”
She shrugged.
“Who looks after you?” asked Damian.
“My mama, of course.” She seemed surprised by the question.
Damian knew kids were allowed in Valdemoros with their mothers, up to a certain age. He hadn’t realized that they let them out for school.
“When does your mama get out?”
“Soon.”
She seemed to be taking it all in stride, but it explained why she stopped by Casa Paloma. It was a brief respite before she headed back to the grimness of Valdemoros.
“I have to go now,” she said, reclaiming the swan on the counter and tucking it into her pocket.
Damian watched her collect the green canvas school bag she’d left by the door.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” he said.
“Sierra. My name is Sierra.” She turned around, walking in reverse towards the gates.
Damian had just gotten off the phone with Rafael when he saw Sierra again. He damn near dropped the glass panel he was installing in the cabinets.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Lice,” she replied.
Her long, dark locks had been reduced to a buzz cut and she looked like she had shrunk overnight. It was probably because her big, doe eyes swallowed all of her face now, but Damian felt a tugging of his heart strings. Valdemoros was no place for a kid. Lice was the least of the horrors that she faced. If he had been younger when they took MaMaLu to prison, he could have been this kid. He could have been Sierra.
“Hey, you want to do something fun today?”
She dropped her bag on the floor and took up the stool that was quickly becoming her spot. “What?”
“Have you ever been on a boat?”
Sierra’s eyes lit up.
It was the beginning of many adventures, both on the water, and off. Damian taught Sierra how to bait a fishing hook, how to steer, how to read the sky. She tried to trick him into doing her math until he started answering every question wrong, earning him permanent banishment from homework duty. He tried to show her how to make paper swans, but it needed focus and discipline, and how could she when there were banisters to slide down, and ladybugs to catch, and ice cream to eat before she headed back? Her swans were sloppy and messy and fell over on their faces, beak down.
Damian and Sierra fought and argued and laughed for the two hours she was there after school. A week went by, and then two, and then three. Slowly, Damian started healing. His nights were still filled with a deep sense of longing for Skye, but he had something to look forward to on the days Sierra came around. When Rafael came to visit, he picked up on the subtle change.
“Damn. This place looks fantastic.” He walked around, from room to room. “But you.” He slapped Damian on the back. “You look better.”
Damian had lost the pallor that came with years of confinement. He had kept fit in prison, but now he had the sturdiness of a man with roots. Casa Paloma was home, and Damian was not just restoring the structure, he was re-learning happiness, re-wiring himself, re-seeing the world through Sierra.
“So, am I going to meet this little girl?” asked Rafael, putting away the business documents that needed Damian’s attention.
“Not today. It’s Dia de Los Muertos.”
Day of the Dead was a Mexican festival that was celebrated over two days: Dia de los Angelitos, dedicated to souls of children who had passed away, and Dia de Los Muertos, celebrated the following day, to honor the spirits of deceased adults. Day of the Dead was a remembrance of loved ones that had passed on, and a celebration of the continuity of life. It was an important day for Damian because he had finally got a new tombstone for MaMaLu, a completed one that was fit to honor her memory. It had taken him weeks to have it custom made and he had received a call that morning, that it was now installed.
“You all set?” asked Rafael.
“I am,” said Damian.
They drove to Paza del Mar, noting the new developments that were now lining either side of the road—modest little homes, interspersed with lavish mansions, hotels, shops, and restaurants. The area had gone through two distinct phases: before El Charro and after El Charro. What had once been a small fishing village that had served as an outpost for the drug lord’s dealings had bloomed after his death. Crime rates dropped and tourists began to trickle in,
opening up jobs and commerce. The presence of foreigners deterred the cartel from trying to re-establish its hold over Paza del Mar. A tourist caught in the crossfire was bad news. It inevitably attracted international attention, and the capos preferred to stay out of the limelight. The shadow of fear slowly lifted off the sleepy little village. It transformed into a charming, laid back getaway, its residents never knowing of the two boys who had made it happen, the two boys who as men now, were parked outside Camila’s.
Rafael had bought and renamed La Sombra, the cantina his parents had worked in, and turned it into a favorite spot for the locals. He stopped by whenever he was in town, checking in with the management, approving the menu and sorting out what needed to be looked after. It was twice the size now, painted white, blue and a cool yellow, with high ceilings and a verdant wrap-around patio. The cuisine was fresh and flavorful. On weekends it pulsed with live music. Accordions and guitars accompanied icy cold cervezas, while the kitchen served steaming tacos stuffed with steak, cheese and jalapeños, and skewers of dunkable scallops with pumpkin seed sauce.
Camila’s was closed on the Day of the Dead, but Rafael laid a bucket of cempasuchil—wild marigolds—in the spot his parents had died. Damian recalled MaMaLu explaining the celebration to him. She believed it was a time when the deceased were given back to their families and friends, when the living and dead were joined, if only for a brief time. Marigolds were supposed to guide the spirits to their loved ones, with their vibrant color and scent. Damian and Rafael stood in silence, in the empty restaurant where Juan Pablo and Camila had once danced to crackly tunes on the radio, each honoring their memories of the couple.
When they stepped outside, they followed the streams of people making their way to the cemetery. The streets were lined with decorative paper skulls, colorful lanterns, and plastic skeletons that danced in the wind. Fishermen held vigil in their rowboats, with torches that reflected in the water.
The statue of Archangel Michael gleamed in the late afternoon, guarding the entrance to the church. Behind it, in the cemetery, families sat on picnic blankets next to gravesites, eating the favorite food of their loved ones: mounds of fruits, peanuts, plates of turkey mole, stacks of tortillas and Day of the Dead breads called pan de muerto. Others were still clearing out tombs and setting up ofrendas, decorative altars adorned with candles, incense, marigolds, sugar skulls, and bright red cockscomb flowers. Toys, water, hot cocoa, and candies were spread out for the angelitos, while shots of mezcal, tequila, and cigarettes were offered to the adult spirits. Everywhere, people were eating, drinking, playing cards or reminiscing.